Talk:Sprocket

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I would like to know how a sprocket teeth profile is designed. I need to design a 8 - teeth sprocket amd a 63 teeth sprocket. Can any body help me how to create the profile of a sprocket teeth.my email is moiz_pk2001@yahoo.com

Merger proposal[edit]

Does anybody have anything to say about the ill-advised suggestion to merge this article with Gear? MarkMLl 11:05, 20 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Your last revision [1] makes a merger with Gear less viable. I hereby withdraw my merger proposal. Sorry to have disturbed your circles. Necessary Evil 15:02, 20 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Don't worry about it, but they really are very different. What's needed in this article is a detail sketch showing the tooth form and the clearances required to work with roller chain- anybody? MarkMLl 16:10, 20 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I'd say no. A gear has teeth to mesh with other gears; a sprocket has teeth to engage a perforated band (such as film), which is very different. Girolamo Savonarola 14:53, 20 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]


Merge from pinion proposal[edit]

I also see an old merge proposal with gear, in the comment above. The three (gear, pinion and sprocket) make reference to intimately related devices. As we know, Wikipedia is not a dictionary, and should not have an entry for each slightly different device in existence, be it named with the same or a different word. The aim of a, say, "gear" article in WP should be to inform the readers, who might be actually looking for what a pinion is, or what a sprocket is, without knowing the difference. Having three different articles is really of no help for the reader wanting to learn about the issue. I propose at least to merge pinion into sprocket, and maybe all three into gear. — isilanes (talk|contribs) 08:41, 3 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I'd say no. A pinion is a subset of gear, not a sprocket. While all three have teeth, gears and pinions (along with racks) work together. Sprockets work with chains and are separate. If there was one term that encompassed all teethed mechanisms, it could include all these as sub articles. -AndrewDressel (talk) 13:15, 3 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Definitely no merger. It might be feasible to merge "pinion" with "gear", or better to have it being a disambiguation page because of its alternative meanings of "feather", "mutilate" or "restrain". A pinion is different in both function and form (e.g. a lamp pinion) from a sprocket, and a sprocket- as pointed out in the article- can be used to drive perforated film or tape which is a different field of application from that of gears.
I'd add that I'm generally in favour of having Wp reading less like a dictionary. However the principal problem is trivial links inserted in pages (for example "machinery" in this article's 2nd para) rather than the existence of articles themselves. MarkMLl (talk) 12:46, 9 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
It's been a month with no positive responses, so I've removed the merger tags. -AndrewDressel (talk) 17:48, 9 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Well done that man. Actually I was very surprised to note that Google gave me no relevant hits for "lamp pinion", I'm pretty sure that I'm not imagining things but possibly if somebody has professional knowledge they could add something to the appropriate article. MarkMLl (talk) 10:09, 10 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Link spam[edit]

Per WP:EL "Wikipedia articles may include links to web pages outside Wikipedia, but must conform to certain formatting restrictions. Such pages could contain further research that is accurate and on-topic; information that could not be added to the article for reasons such as copyright or amount of detail; or other meaningful, relevant content that is not suitable for inclusion in an article for reasons unrelated to its accuracy."

While I'm sure this is a very nice website, I can not find anything on

that meets the criteria list above. -AndrewDressel (talk) 15:46, 14 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Timing belts[edit]

Belt-drive on a belt-driven bicycle, but is that a sprocket or a pulley?

Do timing belts, and other ribbed belts run on sprockets, notched pulleys, or something else by another name? What distinguishes a pully from a sprocket? The teeth, the flanges, or what runs on them, a belt or a chain? Does anyone have a definitive reference, or is this just a murky area?

Gates calls them pulleys and sprockets. See: [2] (you'll have to drill down through a pulley and sprocket entry to see the images, but both show a toothed pulley/sprocket). Wizard191 (talk) 14:17, 4 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Sure enough. Meanwhile, McMaster-Carr appears to call them only pulleys, even though they let you search for "timing belt sprockets": [3]. -AndrewDressel (talk) 15:15, 4 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
"Clear as mud"! I suppose that this gray area has to be discussed in both articles then. Wizard191 (talk) 16:00, 4 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Images of sprockets[edit]

User:AndrewDressel does not like these images of sprockets, which I thought were very nice.

This is final drive of a 1911 Sentinel steam wagon. The rear sprocket includes bevel gears that form the rear axle differential.
M1A2 tank with tread drive sprocket at rear.

Instead, he likes the animation of the grey chain going over the yellow sprocket, which I find oddly disturbing.

His objection to the antique image of a sprocket drive system seems to contradict the use of an old film projector schematic. Also the use of the drive wheel of the LeClerc tank, which is hard to understand without the rest of the vehicle, would seem to justify the a view of the entire tank as presented in the Abrams image.

I seem to run into this on a regular basis, what I feel helps illustrate the fundamental principles of machines, upsets someone else's reading of the Wikipedia manual of style. Prof McCarthy (talk) 01:08, 30 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The picture of the tank should be kept off this page; almost everything in it is irrelevant. The other one is not so bad. Other than the bevel gears are another irrelevant distraction. Perhaps we could find something like it without the extra parts.

Also, what's the reason for forcing the image sizes to 200, 300, 400 px, and even 600px!? If a user has a display that works large images they can set their default thumb size accordingly. If not, they're trying to tell you images that size don't look good for them. Forced images ignore the user's context. --Dennis Bratland (talk) 04:46, 30 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

These are the pictures that are available. If you can find better ones then, I would like to see them. The bevel gear differential in the sprocket is actually quite interesting, at least to me. Similarly, the size and location of the drive sprocket of the Abrams tank is impressive. One would think there were many pictures of chain drives with sprockets, but I think I looked through almost every picture in Wikipedia Commons. Prof McCarthy (talk) 06:21, 30 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Sprocket/Cog Difference?[edit]

What is the difference between a cog and a sprocket? I have never heard of a sprocket but it seems to be the same as what I refer to as a cog. I think the relationship should be mentioned in the article. The gears article doesn't mention this either. Furthermore, I had difficulty finding a conclusive answer online. I am not an expert on the topic but I am giving an opinion as the average man. This yahoo answers page did help though.

A sprocket is the entire wheel and its teeth. A cog is just a tooth. The Oxford English Dictionary also allows that cog may be "2. Short for: a. The series of cogs round a wheel (obs.). b. a cog-wheel." -AndrewDressel (talk) 15:43, 14 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Circular reference in the first phrase defining the sprocket[edit]

I tried to attract attention to the author by editing the page and mentioning the circular reference. I understand that my edit was removed right away, but I don't know how to properly get somebody knowledgeable to fix the issue. A sprocket is ... or even sprockets... I spent some time to find the definition of "sprockets" (the plural with a 's') on wikipedia and on the web but failed. Mgh2009 (talk) 19:16, 6 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]